Dæmon Experience

Resuming the path to label my personality, I perused my Internet browser’s entire history looking for one website that I had logged on years ago, maybe when I was 10 or 11 years old.

The Daemon Page has always been my favorite website to go when pondering the character of a (pronounced like the word “demon”, though obviously not the same), a reflection of your personality and nature that comes in the form of an animal with a gender and a name. If you’ve read the series, Pullman’s The Golden Compass and following sequels have popularized the concept of dæmons. A dæmon often communicates with you through your conscience or your subconscious thoughts–technically, it is you. Your dæmon makes up your conscience, creativity and originality, self-awareness, and rationale.

I have a history of imaginary friends and pets. When I was 7 or 8 I had a pet hamster with white fur named Sugar, and I would pick her little cage off the ground and have to set it down, as if it was material. My parents never knew about “Sugar”, but I didn’t mind. She was the pet that I never had that I could actually cuddle (until I got my cat Tiger!)–I had always owned fish and plants. My sharpest memory of Sugar was in the airport, before boarding the flight to Florida from Boston, when we were moving there. I especially remember putting Sugar’s cage onto the conveyor belt in the security section and holding the cage on the airplane. Sugar vanished once I transferred to my new school, my new third grade classes…perhaps I was too busy to think about her or transport her wherever I was. Whether she was my childhood dæmon or not, I don’t really know, but I guess it means that I was relatively shier when I was in elementary school.

At the moment, I think that as children, we have a stronger imagination and ability to see material things where they aren’t. I remember visiting the Dæmon Page in sixth grade and trying to believe in a dæmon (at that time, I was a red kite), but my quest wasn’t very successful.

However, right now, I’m in a fever of trying to illustrate my complete personality, and visiting the Dæmon Page, I realized that describing this animal reflection of myself would alleviate the frustration that I felt taking pointless quiz after quiz. After reading through different analyses, I have narrowed my dæmon down to two animals: the raven or the magpie.

The main difference between the raven and magpie is that though a raven tends to remain within a large group, sometimes it wants to get away from its peers, who it considers inferior and petty. Ravens like to stay in large groups and prank each other, just like magpies do, and both are very defensive of their friends and family. Though the magpie matches all of my traits, one of the raven’s attributes is that they value bravery, which I don’t (I’m a Ravenclaw fan, not a Gryffindor fan, ironic?), since my image of bravery is recklessness and naivety.

Still, I don’t think that I’ll let go of being a raven completely. I don’t think it’s a mere coincidence that they’re my favorite animal and I assume them to be my calm and thoughtful side, while the magpie represents my more outgoing, prankster side when I’m with my friends and feeling a bit daredevilish. I guess that my dæmon will have to work overtime being a Gemini with multiple personalities.